I have been reading with interest about the Epic versus Apple in-app payment saga, but have no respect for either of the parties. Epic, because they pretend to care about the developer ecosystem when all they want is to be the gatekeeper instead of the gatekeeper. Apple, because they claim higher ground, ⊕ The words “Apple” and “higher ground” in the same sentence of course bring to mind Marco Arment’s essay, but the ground Apple lost 9 years ago has since been reclaimed. wanting to keep their walled garden pristine and free of bad actors, while the garden is in fact overgrown with weeds. Where the roses bushes used to be there are now squatter tents pitched, mangy dogs guarding the perimeter. The magnolias are on fire. Somewhere in the distance a mother cries for her lost child.

You see, our four-year-old has developed an interest in sea animals. Sharks in particular, but any saltwater organism will do. To nurture that interest, I scoured the iPad App Store for anything that a) features the ocean and b) is in the 4+ age category. I should have known better than to trust Apple’s own search, because the results were a disaster: “games” that let you play for all of 30 seconds before serving you a noisy add that can only be closed by tapping repeatedly on an 8-point sized barely visible white “x” even after the mandatory 1-minute lockout period when all you can do is watch low-resolution mock-ups of what may or may not be the game that you will get if you are successfully tricked into downloading whatever they are selling; or “edutainment” products that pop up offers for $99.99 in-app purchases after each tap; or once-reputable game developers who deck out their 4+-approved shark simulators with so many bells, whistles, and requests to buy their in-game currency that you may as well have sent your child to an Atlantic City casino. And not one of the good ones.

In what universe, then, is Apple’s repeated shakedown of Hey not simply evil? Why is the company protecting its adult users from the horrors of an app that is unusable without an externally created account, but is just fine with four-year-olds being bombarded with advertisements and offers for double-digit in-app purchases of worthless game credits? Having even half-way decent curation and a usable search screen would be ideal. Any one of those without the other would also be acceptable. As of January 2024, the iPad/iPhone App Store has neither, and it is a disaster. And Apple has the gal to charge 15–30% for the privilege of being listed in that pigsty.

If Apple’s other App Stores — Mac and AppleTV — are not like that, it is only because they are not worth the scammers' attention. In less than 24 hours I will log into a different Apple store and pay almost four thousand dollars — about a thousand more than my first ever monthly paycheck as a medical resident a dozen or so years ago — for the privilege of playing with their new doohickey. I can only hope that Vision Pro does not become too popular: a 360° full-immersion experience of the iPhone/iPad App Store would not be pretty, though lovers of gross-out horror may be appreciative.

📺 I have high hopes for the fourth season of True Detective. There is no one better to play a detective in an ice-cold town than Jodie Foster. And the frigid, sunless setting pairs well with the Arctic weather we have been having. Now if only the murder mystery itself actually went somewhere.

❄️ There is Christmas and there are birthdays, but then there is finding out that tomorrow is a snow day and the joy that lights up children’s faces when you tell them is second to none.

This morning’s Financial Times has the headline of the week: “Ben & Jerry’s calls for permanent ceasefire in Gaza”. Straight, serious, factual, and comically absurd.

The first snow of the year. Meager for now, but more is on the way tonight. The kids were ecstatic.

Today I learned — from my 4-year-old, no less! — that house flies are among the top 10 non-bee pollinator families. Numbers 1 and 2 are also in the fly family. Is it time to retire our swatter?

The Washington Post has your weekend reading covered: “He spent his life building a $1 million stereo. The real cost was unfathomable”.

The faded photos tell the story of how the Fritz family helped him turn the living room of their modest split-level ranch on Hybla Road in Richmond’s North Chesterfield neighborhood into something of a concert hall — an environment precisely engineered for the one-of-a-kind acoustic majesty he craved. In one snapshot, his three daughters hold up new siding for their expanding home. In another, his two boys pose next to the massive speaker shells. There’s the man of the house himself, a compact guy with slicked-back hair and a thin goatee, on the floor making adjustments to the system. He later estimated he spent $1 million on his mission, a number that did not begin to reflect the wear and tear on the household, the hidden costs of his children’s unpaid labor.

So it goes…

🍿 Laputa: Castle in the Sky (1986) was a delight, even at 2 hours. As the first Studio Ghibli movie it has been overshadowed by what came later, but its influence is obvious. Inside Ghibli itself, there is one-to-one mapping of characters (Captain Dola becomes Yubaba from Spirited Away, her husband becomes Kamaji) and plot points (a boy protecting a magical girl in Ponyo). Externally, the robots are echoed in The Iron Giant and Wall-E. Doesn’t the latest Zelda have a flying castle? And of course it is one of the first popular steampunk anime.

I will also note that the movie is almost 40 years old: it came out the same year as Top Gun and Crocodile Dundee. But good luck getting your kids to watch either. Incredible how much more gracefully animation ages compared to live-action.